


friends who are dear to us gather near to us

by colazitron



Series: 2020 December Prompts [5]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Family Feels, M/M, christmas balls, mostly in that i say so here and completely forgot to make that explicit in the fic, vague Regency setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27919135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: Yusuf really doesn't want to go to Lady Mary's Christmas Ball. Nicky proposes a solution.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: 2020 December Prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036338
Comments: 2
Kudos: 46





	friends who are dear to us gather near to us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aimmyarrowshigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/gifts).



> I've seen The Old Guard exactly once and I do not know what I am doing. This is technically regency not-AU, but you're gonna have to do most of the work imagining it. Sorry.
> 
> for V

Yusuf sighs as he sets the letter down, pulling Nicky’s attention from the newspaper he’d been reading.

“Bad news?” he asks.

Yusuf smiles and shakes his head, picking his spoon back up to finish the porridge he’d been eating before the letter had been brought in. “Only for a certain definition of bad news.”

Nicky makes a curious noise and folds the newspaper up, setting it aside, now clearly entirely distracted from both the newspaper and his own breakfast. “And what definition is that?”

Yusuf barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes. “Lady Mary sent another invitation for her Christmas ball,” he explains.

“That woman is singularly tenacious,” Nicky says, a note of awe in his voice.

“It’s very admirable, for sure,” Yusuf agrees, though judging by the look on Nicky’s face, he’s not doing a very good job of concealing his sarcasm. “Still I’d much rather she didn’t focus her tenacity on me. I don’t think I can spend another evening having the various virtues of her four daughters extolled to me.”

Nicky laughs at him, bright and happy, not a single trace of pity on his face. Just because he’d gotten to be the grieving widower this time around. Traitor.

“Tenacious and with good taste,” Nicky says. “I do rather like her.”

“Good sense, more like,” Yusuf says. “I doubt she cares more about me than about the money we clearly have.”

“Good sense is to be commended just as much as good taste; you do her no disservice by pointing it out,” Nicky teases, and Yusuf briefly considers flinging a spoon full of porridge at his favourite green waistcoat. Clearly, Nicky can read that expression just as well as all of Yusuf’s other one, as he laughs again. “Oh, cheer up. We’ll decline.”

“I fear if we can’t give her a good enough reason, she won’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Yusuf sighs. The woman really is exceedingly tenacious. And truthfully, Yusuf can’t fault her for it, he just thinks it’s in both their interests that she not waste her time on him.

“So we’ll cite a previous engagement,” Nicky says, and Yusuf can practically watch an idea dawn on his handsome face. “We should simply host a dinner of our own.”

“You want to host a Christmas dinner?”

Nicky’s smile widens as the idea settles in his mind. He stretches his leg under the table to meet Yusuf’s, a familiar, comfortable touch. “Not a Christmas dinner as such. Just a dinner that happens to fall on Christmas. We’ll invite our friends.”

“Our friends,” Yusuf repeats, thinking of Mounir and Fatma and their twin girls. It had been little Laila who’d inadvertently given Nicky the nickname he now loves to go by among friends, struggling to pronounce his full name when she’d been just a child. “Our friends who don’t celebrate Christmas?”

“Doesn’t matter if it’s not a Christmas dinner,” Nicky insists. “At least they probably won’t already be otherwise engaged.”

“I suppose.”

A shadow falls over Nicky’s face as he looks off and out through the window for a moment before meeting Yusuf’s gaze again when Yusuf reaches out to take his hand on top of the table.

“And maybe Andromache will have returned from her travels by then. It would do her good, I think, to be surrounded by life and laughter for a night.”

“You know she doesn’t celebrate Christmas either,” Yusuf points out, though he thinks Nicky’s probably right. Andromache hasn’t been the same ever since they lost Quynh. Not that he blames her. If he lost Nicky, he wouldn’t last a single day before he’d try to follow him.

“It’s not about Christmas,” Nicky repeats again.

Yusuf lets the idea sit for a moment and then looks across to Nicky again. “But what about you? Won’t you miss it?”

Nicky only smiles at him, amused by what he clearly thinks is a folly on Yusuf’s part, and then leans in to meet Yusuf in a gentle kiss. “I’ll be with my friends and family. What better way to spend the night than that, dear heart?”

Yusuf smiles to himself, and then at Nicky, kissing him again. “We’d better tell Lady Mary we’re otherwise engaged then.”

“I knew you’d see it my way,” Nicky says, and kisses him again before sitting back up and reaching for his newspaper again.

**The End**


End file.
